Tales of Old Earth (11 page)

At which point Sugar would say, “Seen him? Why, just this last run, I had a private audience with His Satanic Majesty. Sugar, he says to me, You been talking mighty big of late, I guess it's time to remind you who's boss.”

“What did you say?” They would all hold their breaths and bend close.

“I said, Drop your pants and bend over, motherfucker.
I'm
driving now.”

They'd shriek then, scandalized and delighted. And when Sugar opened his arms, two of the honeys would slide in under them neat as you please.

Business was brisk at the bar. I tried not to let my thoughts show, but I must've made a bad job of it, for I was just thrusting one of those little paper umbrellas into a frozen daiquiri when a hand closed upon my shoulder.

I whirled around, right into the most knowing smile I'd ever seen. It was a smart-dressed lady, all in red. She had on a bowler hat and she smoked a cigar. Her skirt went all the way to the ground, but there was a slit up one side and you could see the silver derringer stuck into her garter.

“You look worried,” she said. “I wouldn't think the crew had much of anything to worry about.”

“We're human, ma'am. Subject to the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to.” I sighed. “And I will confess that if I weren't obliged to be here behind the bar—well. What's your pleasure?”

For a long moment she studied me.

“You interest me,” she said at last, and vanished into the crowd.

Not much later she was back, steering a shy little porcelain doll of a girl by the elbow. “Missy can tend bar,” she said. She slipped one hand between the girl's legs and the other behind her shoulder blades and hoisted her clear over the bar. It was an astonishing display of strength and she did it with no special emphasis, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “She's had more than sufficient experience.”

“Now hold on,” I said. “I can't just—”

“Missy doesn't mind. Do you, little sweet?”

The girl, wide-eyed, shook her head no.

“Wait for me here.” The lady leaned down and kissed her full on the mouth—full, and deep too. Nobody paid any mind. The festivities had reached that rowdy stage. “You come with me.”

I didn't have much choice but to follow.

Her name, she said, was Jackie. And, when I'd introduced myself, “I'm going to help you, Malcolm.”

“Why?”

“I have observed,” she said, “that other people are often willing to accept whatever events may chance to happen to them, rather than take an active part in their unfolding. That's not me.” She glanced scornfully back at the casino car. “I am no gambler. All my pleasure lies in direct action. Tell me your problem. Make it interesting.”

When I'd told my story, Jackie took the cigar out of her mouth and stared at it thoughtfully. “Your friend's attention is currently given over entirely to the pursuit of money. Can't you just go back to the baggage car now and look?”

I shook my head. “Not with Sugar standing by the rear door.”

We were in the space between the casino and the next car forward, with the rails flashing by underneath and the cars twisting and rattling about us. Jackie put a hand on the bottommost rung of the access ladder and said, “Then we'll go over the roof.”

“Now, just a minute!”

“No delays.” She frowned down at her skirt. “As soon as I can arrange a change of clothing.”

Up the sleeper car she strode, opening doors, glancing within, slamming them shut again. Fifth one she tried, there was a skinny man in nothing but a white shirt working away on top of his lady-love. He looked up angrily. “Hey! What the fuck do you-”

Jackie pressed her derringer against his forehead and nodded toward a neatly folded bundle of clothing. “May I?”

The man froze. He couldn't die here, but that didn't mean he'd relish a bullet through his skull. “They're yours.”

“You're a gent.” Jackie scooped up the bundle. Just before closing the door, she paused and smiled down at the terrified face of the woman underneath her victim.

“Pray,” she said, “continue.”

In the hallway she whipped off her skirt, stepped into the slacks, and zipped them up before I had the chance to look away. The jacket she tossed aside. She buttoned the vest over her blouse and tentatively tried on one of the man's wing tips. “They fit!”

I went up the rungs first. The wind was rushing over the top of the train something fierce. Gingerly, I began crawling across the roof of the casino car. I was scared out of my wits and making no fast progress, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked back.

My heart about failed me. Jackie was standing straight up, oblivious to the furious rattling speed of the train. She reached down and hauled me to my feet. “Let's dance!” she shouted into my ear.

“What?” I shouted back, disbelieving. The wind buffeted us wildly. It whipped off Jackie's bowler hat and sent it tumbling away. She laughed.

“
Dance!
You've heard of dancing, haven't you?”

Without waiting for a reply, she seized me by the waist and whirled me around, and we were dancing. She led and I followed, fearful that the least misstep would tumble us from the train and land us broken and lost in the marshes of Styx. It was the single most frightening and exhilarating experience of my entire existence, moreso even than my first time with that traveling man out by the gravel quarry at the edge of town.

I was so frightened by now that it no longer mattered. I danced, hesitantly at first, and then with abandon. Jackie spun me dizzily around and around. The wind snatched sparks from her cigar and spangled the night with stars. Madness filled me and I danced, I danced, I danced.

At last Jackie released me. She looked flushed and satisfied. “That's better. No more crawling, Malcolm. You and I aren't made for it. Like as not, all our strivings will come to nothing in the end; we must celebrate our triumph now, while yet we can.” And somehow I knew precisely how she felt and agreed with it too.

Then she glanced off to the side. The dark wastelands were zipping past. A ghastly kind of corpse-fire was crawling over the muck and filth to either side of the tracks. “A person might jump off here with no more damage than a broken arm, maybe a couple of ribs. We can't be more than—what?—two hundred fifty, three hundred miles south of New Jersey? It would not be difficult for a determined and spirited individual to follow the tracks back and escape.”

“Nobody escapes,” I said. “Please don't think of it.”

A flicker of sadness passed over her face then, and she said, “No, of course not.” Then, brisk again, “Come. We have work to do. Quickly. If anybody heard us stomping about up here, they'll know what we're up to.”

We came down between cars at the front of the baggage car. There was a tool closet there I had the key to, and inside it a pry bar. I had just busted open the padlock when LaBelle suddenly slammed through the door from the front of the train, wild-eyed and sweaty.

“Malcolm,” she said breathlessly, “don't!”

From somewhere about her person—don't ask me where—Jackie produced a wicked-looking knife. “Do not try to stop us,” she said softly.

“You don't understand,” LaBelle cried. “There's a
hound
on board!”

I heard it coming then.

The hounds of Hell aren't like the Earthly sort: They're bigger than the biggest mastiffs and they bear a considerable resemblance to rats. Their smell is loathsome beyond description and their disposition even worse.

LaBelle shrieked and shrank aside as the hound came bounding down the aisle.

With something between a howl and a scream, it was upon us.

“Go!” Jackie shoved me through the doorway. “I'll handle this. You do your part now.”

She slammed the door shut.

Silence wrapped itself about me. It was ghastly. For all I could hear, the hound didn't even exist.

I flicked on the electric and in its swaying light took a look around. All the usual baggage: cases of fine French wines and satin sheets for the Lords of Hell, crates of shovels and rubber hip boots and balky manual typewriters for the rest. But to the rear of the car there was one thing more.

A coffin.

It was a long, slow walk to the coffin. I thought of all the folks I'd known who'd died and gone where I'd never see them again. I thought of all those things it might contain. It seemed to me then like Pandora's box, filled with nameless dread and the forbidden powers of Old Night. There was nothing I wanted to do less than to open it.

I took a deep breath and jammed the edge of the pry bar into the coffin. Nails screamed, and I flung the top back.

The woman inside opened her eyes.

I stood frozen with horror. She had a wrinkled little face, brown as a nut, and you could tell just by looking at it that she'd led a hard life. There was that firmness about the corners of her mouth, that unblinking quality about the eyes. She was a scrawny thing, all bones and no flesh, and her arms were crossed over her flat chest. Light played about her face and lit up the coffin around her head. I looked at her and I was just flat-out afraid of what was going to happen to Sugar and to me and to all of us when word of this got out.

“Well, young man?” she said in a peppery sort of way. “Aren't you going to help me up?”

“Ma'am?” I gaped for an instant before gathering myself together. “Oh! Yes, ma'am. Right away, ma'am.” I offered her my hand and helped her sit up. The little shimmer of light followed her head up. Oh, sweet Heaven, I thought. She's one of the Saved.

I opened the door from the baggage compartment reluctantly, fearful of the hound that must surely wait just outside. Still, what other choice did I have?

There was Jackie, spattered from head to foot with shit and gore, and her clothes all in tatters. She stood with her legs braced, a cocky smile on her face, and the butt-end of her cigar still clenched in her teeth. LaBelle crouched by her feet—she shakily stood up when I emerged—staring at something in the distant marshes. Away off behind us, a howl of pain and rage like nothing I'd ever heard before dwindled to nothing.

The hound was nowhere to be seen.

First thing the old woman said then was, “Young lady. Do you think it seemly to be walking about dressed as a man?”

Jackie took the cigar butt out of her mouth.

“Get rid of that filthy thing too.”

For an instant, I thought there was going to be trouble. But then Jackie laughed and flung the cigar out into the night. It was still lit and I could see by the way the old lady frowned that she'd noticed that too.

I offered her my arm again and we made our way slowly up the train.

She was Sugar's mother. I never had any doubt about that. As we walked up the train, she questioned LaBelle and me about her son, whether he was well, was he behaving himself, did he have a special lady-friend yet, and what exactly did he have in mind for her and him?

LaBelle was all in a lather to tell us how Sugar had arranged things. He'd kept in regular touch with the folks back home. So he'd been informed how his mother had spent her life just waiting and praying for the fullness of time so that she could die and get to see her baby boy again. Nobody'd had the heart to tell her about his new job. Sugar and his relations figured that since Divine Providence wasn't going to bring them together, it was up to him.

“He got it all worked out. He saved all his money,” LaBelle said, “enough to set himself up in a little place on the outskirts of Ginny Gall. You'll like it there,” she assured the old lady. “People say it's not half bad. It's where the folks in Hell go for a big Saturday night.”

The old lady said nothing. Something about the way her jaw clenched, though, gave me an uneasy feeling.

The casino car fell silent when we entered.

“
Mama
!” Sugar cried. He ran to her side and hugged her. They were both crying, and so were the girls. Even Billy-B had a strange kind of twisted smile on his face.

Mrs. Selma Green took a long, slow look around the car and its inhabitants. She did not look content. “Sugar, what are you doing in such raffish company? What bad thing have you done to bring you to such a pass? I thought I'd watched over you better than that.”

Sugar drew himself up proudly. “I never did a cruel or evil thing in all my life, Mama. You know that. I never did nothing you'd've disapproved of.” His eyes swept the room disdainfully, and to the damned and the crew alike he said, “Not because I much cared, one way or the other. But because I knew what you expected of me. There was bad company, at times, tried to mislead me. Wicked women urged wicked things upon me. But never was a man big enough or a woman sweet enough to make me go against your teachings.”

Personally, I believed it. A man like Sugar—what need had he of violence? People just naturally made room for him. And those who wouldn't, well, that was only self-defense, wasn't it?

But his mother did not look convinced. “What, then, are you doing
here
?” And there is absolutely no way I could do justice to the scorn with which she said that last word.

Sugar looked abashed. “I dunno,” he mumbled. “They just didn't like my looks, I guess.”

“The truth, boy!”

“I, uh, kind of mouthed off to the Recording Angel, Mama. That's how I wound up here.” He grew angry at the memory; you could see it still rankled. “You oughta be grateful we're letting a roughneck like you squeak by, he said. Don't bend no rules for me, I told him. I'd expect a little more gratitude than you're showing, he says. Ain't grateful to man nor angel, says I, for something I earned on my own right. Oh, that angel was mad enough to spit nails! He wanted me to bow and truckle to him. But I got my pride. I told him I wouldn't play nigger for nobody. And I guess that's what brought me here.”